New York City is home to many amazing museums, big and small—the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MoMa, the Whitney, the Guggenheim, the Morgan Library, and the American Museum of Natural History, to name a few. As far as attractions and places to go, there is Times Square, Madison Square Garden, the 9/11 Memorial, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, shows on Broadway, and even two lackluster professional football teams for diehard fans.
Yet one of the top museums of the Big Apple, more steel than marble and glass, is a true piece of living history. A museum as long as Rockefeller Center is tall, a museum that helped to shape the course of human events during the 20th century. Not quite a relic, but an old warrior now telling its tales of glory and hardship from days gone by.
Berthed at Pier 86, at 12th Avenue and 46th Street in the Hell’s Kitchen section of Midtown Manhattan, the Intrepid Museum has evolved and grown over the past 40-plus years and now welcomes more than one million visitors annually from all over the world.
The USS Intrepid (CV-11), an Essex-class aircraft carrier, is the fourth vessel to bear this name, and “intrepid” she truly is. The ship survived a torpedo hit, kamikaze attacks, and a “fender bender” with the Panama Canal on her first passage through the waterway. So resilient was the ship, her crews, and fighter squadrons, Japanese combatants called her “the Ghost Ship,” as she kept returning to the war time and again after they believed she had been sunk.
The plans to build the Intrepid were well on their way before the United States entered World War II. Her keel was laid in Newport News six days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. That fateful day and the declaration of war that followed expedited her construction and accelerated her completion by 17 months.
During the Pacific war, the Intrepid participated in the Formosa Air Battle (see “‘A Deadly Proving Ground,’” pp. 22–27), the Battle of Leyte Gulf—the largest naval battle in history–and helped to sink Japan’s superbattleships, the Yamato and Musashi. The Intrepid also supported the invasion of Okinawa. In the 1950s she was modernized to be an attack carrier and then in 1961 once again updated to be an antisubmarine carrier. During the Vietnam War, the Intrepid deployed to Southeast Asia three times between 1966 and 1969.
After more than three decades of faithful service in various duties and several overhauls and refittings, the Intrepid was decommissioned for the last time on 15 March 1974. Some readers may still recall the ship was moored at Philadelphia Naval Shipyard through 1976 and hosted exhibits as part of the United States Bicentennial celebrations.
Thankfully, a campaign to save the Intrepid from being scrapped was successful. Secretary of the Navy John Lehman signed the ship over to a private business group in 1981 and thus began the ship’s new life. A soft opening on 4 July 1982 was followed by an official launch event on 3 August 1982.
The exhibits in, on board, and around the ship are vast and wonderful. The information is well presented, and displays mix facts with fun and fantastic vintage photographs. There is a 22-foot-long replica of the carrier built from 250,000 LEGOs and a giant full-scale replica of the aircraft carrier Intrepid’s 1968 anniversary cake. On my recent visits, I was glad to see groups of students on field trips as well as multigenerational families, one with a veteran wearing his ship’s cap and leading his children and grandchildren through the ship. The museum does a lot to promote education and engage younger visitors.
The museum regularly introduces temporary exhibitions and debuts new permanent exhibits to keep its content fresh. The FG-1D Corsair fighter plane currently undergoing restoration by the museum’s expert staff will move into hangar one early next year, coinciding with a major update to the exhibits in that space, including the installation of never-before-seen artifacts from the museum’s collection.
The Allison and Howard Lutnick Theater is an impressive theater, lecture hall, and event space that was built into the carrier where one of her massive elevators once was, bringing planes from the hangar deck to the flight deck.
On a flight deck that previously launched propeller planes during World War II, fighter jets during Vietnam, and helicopters that recovered NASA astronauts from Gemini and Mercury missions, the Intrepid Museum now displays 30 planes and helicopters, including a Grumman F-14 Tomcat and a F-11 Tiger that was once jet number 5 of the Blue Angels. There also are planes from Poland, Italy, and Israel. The largest plane on the deck and the one that draws the attention of many visitors is the 102-foot-long supersonic spy plane Lockheed A-12, which achieved speeds over Mach 3. The Lockheed A-12, code name “Oxcart,” was a top secret reconnaissance airplane built for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Off to the port side of the ship is the world’s fastest commercial airliner, a British Airways Concorde. First added to the complex in 2003, this Concorde set the world speed record for passenger airliners on 7 February 1996, when it flew between London and New York in 2 hours, 52 minutes and 59 seconds. It also logged the most flying hours of the 20 Concordes built. The airliner was recently refreshed, renovated, and returned to Pier 86 in March 2024.
Planes or helicopters from every branch of the U.S. armed forces are on display. Though it traveled the heavens before the Space Force was officially created, the Space Shuttle Enterprise has been housed in a museum pavilion since 2012.
Also part of the Intrepid Museum complex is the submarine Growler (SSG-57), one of first U.S. nuclear missile submarines, which is open for viewing.
Though a casual walk through the Intrepid Museum can be accomplished in just a few hours, the tour can easily take up most of an enjoyable day, slipping back into history on The Fighting ‘I.’ Walking through the ship, past radio rooms and squadron quarters, is a walk into the past. Because of steep stairs and ladders in sections, strollers, large bags, and backpacks are not permitted. Some special exhibits have a separate fee. The nearest subway stations to the Intrepid Museum are 34th St-Hudson Yards and 42 St-Port Authority Bus Terminal.
After the September 11 attacks, the museum returned to active duty and served as temporary field headquarters for the FBI while it investigated the attacks. In addition, part of the flight deck was cleared to make way for a temporary helipad. The museum reopened to patrons five weeks later. Another interesting incident that occurred near the museum was the ditching of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 on 15 January 2009, which could be seen quite clearly from the deck of the Intrepid and was just a short distance up the Hudson River.
The Big ‘I,’ The Fighting ‘I,’ The Dry ‘I,’ The Ghost Ship, Lucky ‘Leven, and even Decrepit—the USS Intrepid has earned many names over the years. Perhaps the best of them is now museum.
